Tariffs, BAT, and Social Credit: A US-China Debate

Over the past few years, China's tech ascension has become one of the hottest topics du jour. Just as there are America's FAANG companies (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google), a trio of Chinese companies have their own tech acronym: BAT's Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent. And China has clear goals to surpass the United States as the new techonomic superpower, from President Xi Jinping's "Made in China 2025" initiative to his plans for China to lead AI globally by 2030. as the social credit system, curb innovation? Is the Belt and Road Initiative too sprawling? And wants to retaliatory tariffs to bring two of the world's superpowers, and their economies, to their knees?

The folks at Intelligence Squared gathered five foreign policy experts-Ian Bremmer, founder and president of the Eurasia Group; former U.S. Undersecretary of Defense Michèle Flournoy; WITH Professor Yasheng Huang; Parag Khanna, the founder and managing partner of FutureMap; and Susan Thornton, Former Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs-to debate three motions: